On the few occasions that Tolkien mentions Bombadil in his letters, he is seemingly as elusive and evasive as Tom himself. Referring to him as an “allegory” (another example of Tolkien’s confession of the allegorical aspect of his work), he describes Tom as “an exemplar, a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature, because they are ‘other’ and wholly independent of the enquiring mind, a spirit coeval with the rational mind, and entirely unconcerned with ‘doing’ anything with the knowledge: Zoology and Botany
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